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10 Lessons for Liveable High Density Cities

Armed with lessons learned from Singapore’s successful urbanization experience, the Urban Land Institute (ULI) has published a new report that identifies ten principles for creating liveable high density cities.

Written in conjunction with Singapore’s Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC), "10 Principles for Liveable High Density Cities: Lessons from Singapore" [PDF] looks to the island city-state's consistently high standards of liveability and sustainability for lessons on how to urbanize without sacrificing a high quality of life.

Developed during two workshops hosted in 2012 by the CLC and ULI Asia Pacific, the principles detailed in the report include: planning for long-term growth and renewal, activating spaces for greater safety, and making public spaces work harder.

“Expansive, rapid urbanization is adding challenges to the business of building cities that are prosperous, liveable, and able to withstand time and change,” notes ULI Chief Executive Officer Patrick L. Phillips. “Through our work with the CLC, we are aiming to demonstrate how well-planned design and development is the foundation for a physical environment that is conducive to a competitive economy, sustainable environment and a high quality of life. Ultimately, cities are about what’s best for people, not buildings or cars. The places that are built to reflect this reality will have a competitive edge in our globalized economy.”

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Comments

For the love of all that is

For the love of all that is holy, would mass transit agencies (and other organizations using vehicles such as garbage, police, fire and commercial shipping), please stop with the beeps, bells, whistles, claxons and pre-recorded voice commands, every time you turn, change lanes, pull to a stop or back up? You're driving right beneath the living and bedroom windows of working men and women, their kids and the elderly, who are trying to get some peace and quiet!

I get that you're concerned about the safety and convenience of passengers and pedestrians, both able-bodied and disabled. Given the extremely large number of people, however, whose quality of life is greatly diminished by exposure to this near-torturous noise pollution, versus the vastly smaller number of people who have accidents each year related to mass transit and other service vehicles, not to mention the even smaller number of disabled people who have managed for decades to maneuver largely without issue through the hustle and bustle of public streets, it should be obvious that quality of life should never be trumped by the attempts of misguided bureaucrats or litigation-phobic business executives to make such vehicles safe by making them obnoxiously noisy.

We can make better service vehicles. We have the technology. Want to alert a vision or hearing-impaired passenger that their stop is coming up? Send them a signal via gps to their smart phone. If cost is an issue, give them a free or low-cost smart phone.

As for pedestrians who aren't watching where they are going, perhaps transit agencies and other organizations using service vehicles should remember that private passenger cars, trucks and vans have gotten along just fine without any such audible alerts----other than a horn, and, by law, only used in case of an impending collision---to alert someone that, for example, they are turning or backing up.

Can you just imagine what it would be like, however, to live in a world where 3 billion vehicles beep every time they turn, change lanes or back up? Where interior vocal commands can be heard by passersby and people in their homes? 24 hours a day?